It is known to provide centres for handling voice calls.
Call centres of this type may be used in various crisis management roles, for instance as help lines for various “at risk” groups. In such an environment it is important that there is continuity of contact with a caller, and that a caller who has been identified as posing a potential problem be responded to as quickly as possible.
Text messaging is a call to immediate action unlike emails which are regarded as correspondence and may require a considered response. It poses particular difficulties in a crisis management role in terms of identifying the caller and relating an urgent message to the caller's prior messages. There is a need to provide continuity of message handling in which the same person handles calls from a single caller as a chat operation, and thus since each call is likely to be handled by a different operator, the lack of continuity slows the call handling down.
For example there is a need to separate calls (particularly text messages) which are made by two or more persons sharing a single telephone, whether this is a landline telephone or a mobile telephone. Such sharing is becoming common and some method of differentiating two users, one of whom may be at risk, would be a preferred option.
It is proposed to provide a system for call handling which overcomes these shortcomings.
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